Google news alerts condemn the ITU
Dr. Matsakis has revealed something much more deep about the ITU and leap seconds than he realized. On Fri 2005-11-11T02:55:22 -0500, [EMAIL PROTECTED] hath writ: > There is a nifty google feature that will scour the internet for news > articles on any subject, and send you weeky, daily, or immediate > notifications. > > Browse on http://www.google.com/alerts > > Beware- If you ask for 'leap second' you will get more than you want! > > Ask for "leap second", and you will get emails like what is below. As I mentioned, I've been scanning for news in other languages. Until yesterday I was a bit mystified to find that searches on the Spanish term "segundo intercalar" produced nothing. Then a hint from a Spanish weblog prompted me to try something different. See what you get if you try this link today http://news.google.com/news?hl=es&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=d&btnG=Search+News&q=%22segundo+intercalar%22 However, if you try the following link today you get much more http://news.google.com/news?hl=es&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=d&q=%22segundo+adicional%22&btnG=Search+News It is evident that the Spanish language press picked up the press release from Nothnagel at U Bonn. It is also evident that when they translated the press release from German to Spanish they had no idea what the canonical name of a leap second was. They used the words "segundo adicional" instead of "segundo intercalar". The text of ITU-R TF.460-6 is available from the ITU in three languages: English, French, and Spanish. The Spanish text plainly indicates that the name for a leap second is "segungo intercalar", plural "segundos intercalares". But nobody knows this. Why? Because for practical purposes ITU-R TF.460-6 is a secret. Everyone in the world is supposed to implement it in their operational and legal systems, but it is not openly available for them to see it. If there is blame to be had for improper implementation and use of leap seconds it is pretty clear where that blame lies. The same analysis probably applies to the reason why POSIX had "double leap seconds" in its specification for a decade. I agree with Andreas Bauch of the German PTB when he was quoted recently in Die Welt http://www.welt.de/data/2005/10/28/794936.html?s=2 but the blame for the ignorance which has contributed to sloppy software does not belong on the programmers. Last week the WP7A reported that they lacked consensus. I know I am not alone in thinking that one of the first things that WP7A needs to do is to publish ITU-R TF.460 with no access restriction. -- Steve Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>WGS-84 (GPS) UCO/Lick ObservatoryNatural Sciences II, Room 165Lat +36.99858 University of CaliforniaVoice: +1 831 459 3046 Lng -122.06014 Santa Cruz, CA 95064http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/ Hgt +250 m
Re: BBC - Leap second talks are postponed
On Nov 17, 2005, at 2:45 AM, Clive D.W. Feather wrote: Microsoft *spit* Outlook calendar management talks about "GMT Daylight Savings Time" or some such idiocy. Every spring I respond to the first appointment request from my boss with "so do you want to meet at 10:00 GMT or 10:00 BST?". Isn't this a reflection of Britain having a single time zone? The four timezones of the contiguous U.S. produce a a very diverse set of local time conventions. About one fourth of the states are split by timezones. Indiana and Arizona have idiosyncratic daylight saving rules (see http://iraf.noao.edu/~seaman/leap/3nations.pdf, three nested political entities with different DST rules). Certainly there is occasional confusion about meeting times and TV schedules, but this is a fact of synchronizing schedules across a wide extent of longitude. In particular, the multiple timezones enforce a common usage for daylight saving terminology. We have Eastern Standard Time and Eastern Daylight Time, and similar pairs for the other timezones: EST/EDT, CST/CDT, MST/MDT, PST/PDT. Which is to say that daylight saving is properly viewed as a modification of the underlying standard timezone system. Contrarily, in Britain you have chosen to call your civil standard time "Greenwich Mean Time" and your civil daylight saving time "British Summer Time", rather than (for instance) British Standard Time and British Daylight Time. It also happens that "Greenwich Mean Time" has a technical definition as a deprecated international standard. Other localities don't have this problem since nobody (except under obscure circumstances) references "New York Mean Time", but rather something like "Local Mean Time in New York". Greenwich is an identifier associated with a locality. British is an identifier associated with an extended territory, i.e., a timezone. Perhaps folks can comment on international usage broader than my parochial fixation on the United States? Rob Seaman National Optical Astronomy Observatory Tucson, Arizona
Re: BBC - Leap second talks are postponed
John.Cowan said: >> "GMT" is, unfotunately, widely used to mean the time in Britain >> during winter. > > Indeed, it is sometimes used to mean that even in the summer. There was > some confusion in my company last year about a teleconference scheduled in > "GMT" which turned out to actually refer to British Summer Time. Microsoft *spit* Outlook calendar management talks about "GMT Daylight Savings Time" or some such idiocy. Every spring I respond to the first appointment request from my boss with "so do you want to meet at 10:00 GMT or 10:00 BST?". -- Clive D.W. Feather | Work: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Tel:+44 20 8495 6138 Internet Expert | Home: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Fax:+44 870 051 9937 Demon Internet | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646 Thus plc||
